Frieda Allweiss

Curated by Chris Taft

Frieda Allweiss was born on May 21st in 1933 in Chortkow, Poland. Of the 30,000 people from her town, 10,000 were Jews. After the war, only one hundred survived, including the ones who escaped to Russia. Frieda was able to survive through multiple travels around Russia and through her mother’s decision to leave Poland. She was able to be reunited with her father and move to Detroit, where she found a sense of normalcy.

Before the War

Frieda Allweiss was born as Freida Schiller on May 21st in 1933, in a small town called Chortkow, Poland, which is now Ukraine. Freida was an only child and her mother Sarah and her father Marcus both had extended families who lived in the same area.…

Early War Period

On June 22nd, her father and Freida were both in bed listening to music on the radio when her mother came running in and told her father that the Germans invaded Russia. Her father turned the radio to Moscow, which was saying that on the morning of…

Collectives

In Stalingrad, 8-year-old Frieda and her mother were put in a collective farm where the main crop was watermelons. The farm was one place where they had plenty to eat. Frieda’s mother would work on the farm and pick watermelons, while Frieda was sent…

Reunited

In 1942, by sheer luck Frieda’s father found them. While they were in Stalingrad, they had met a woman from their same town whose husband was in the Russian army, too. She had his field address and kept in touch with him. She had nobody and stayed…

Starting a Family

In 1949, Frieda and her family moved to Detroit. They came through the Jewish Federation as they had work for Frieda’s father. Detroit was where Frieda went to school and where life became more normal for her. Her dad went to work for Builders and…